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Things to see in Buffalo?

IlazyMexican

Heading up for a destination wedding and will have some downtime...what should I go see?

 
Nov 5, 09 9:54 am
blah

The Martin House and the Guaranty Building are SPECTACULAR!!!! It's sort of like Beckett and Joyce--Beckett wrote in French to escape the seemingly inescapable gravitational pull of Joyce's English prose and Wright went horizontal and made the ornament the plan to escape Sullivan's primacy in making post and beam soaring and tall. The Guaranty Building looks like it was sculpted from terra cotta. It is very powerful.

Nov 5, 09 11:45 am  · 
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holz.box

toshiko mori's martin visitor center is worth a glance.

Nov 5, 09 12:26 pm  · 
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davvid

The Darwin Martin House (FLW) with its brand new Greatbatch Pavilion (Toshiko Mori),
The Guaranty Building (Louis Sullivan), The Albright-Knox Art Gallery ( Gordon Bunshaft), Klienhans Music Hall (Eliel and Eero Saarinen)/ Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra

The neighborhoods around these sites are also nice to walk around. Elmwood Avenue and Allen street have a lot of restaurants, coffee shops and small galleries.

If you're feeling adventurous and have a car, you should explore some of the urban decay. The Buffalo Central terminal is an old Art Deco train station that has sat vacant for like 30 years. The Grain Elevators, south of Downtown are creepy and fantastic.

Artvoice.com is a good source for information on arty events.

Nov 5, 09 12:36 pm  · 
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niro

all places mentioned above are all well worth the visit, here are couple places u should check out near by.

niagra falls is 1/2hr away, us' side has the better fall but can only be seen across the boarder.

if ur passing by rochester, stop by kahn's, First Unitarian Church.

Nov 6, 09 4:22 am  · 
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aldorossi

Keep your map handy and check out what is a pretty cool City Beautiful era urban plan. The parkways and traffic circles make for an interesting drive.

Ditto from above: Stop by the Saarinen Kleinhans Music Hall (a colaboration of father and son), which is at one of the traffic circles.

The Albight Knox Gallery has a really impresive colection of modern and contemporary art, although I've heard rumors they have been selling off some of thier collection.

Downtown, in additon to Sullivan there are a pair of office buildings from the 1890's with great atriums and skylight structures. They're on axis with each other along Division Street across from the baseball stadium.

For some urban archeology, there is one small fragment of a pier of Wright's Larkin Company Office Building extant to search out. The Martin house is an essential stop, and there are other Wright houses to look up and cruise past.

For a good primer, read "Concrete Atlantis" by Reyner Banham, where he studies Buffalo grain elevators and daylight factories, and their influence on the European modernists. They're is a comprehensive guide book to Buffalo Architecture which was coauthored by Banham. Worth having with you.

All in all, Buffalo is an intersting place for architects to visit.

Nov 6, 09 11:08 am  · 
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Medusa

The marina is beautiful at sunset. There is a bar there called Doug's Dive, or something like that. Grab a beer and watch the sunset over the lake.

Nov 7, 09 12:58 pm  · 
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Medusa

^ BTW, this is right outside Buffalo in Woodlawn, NY near the Ford plant.

Nov 7, 09 12:59 pm  · 
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cowerd

robert moses parkway and the bethlehem steel plant for the industrial detritus

Nov 7, 09 4:22 pm  · 
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